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dude - 4 dictionary results

dude

  [dood, dyood] noun, verb, dud⋅ed, dud⋅ing.
Use dude in a Sentence
–noun
1. a man excessively concerned with his clothes, grooming, and manners.
2. Slang. fellow; chap.
3. a person reared in a large city.
4. Western U.S. an urban Easterner who vacations on a ranch.
—Verb phrase
5. dude up, Informal. to dress in one's fanciest, best, or most stylish clothes; dress up: He got all duded up to go to the dance.
Origin:
1880–85, Americanism; orig. uncert.
Dictionary.com Unabridged
Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.
Cite This Source Link To dude
dude   (dōōd, dyōōd)   
n.  
  1. Informal An Easterner or city person who vacations on a ranch in the West.
  2. Informal A man who is very fancy or sharp in dress and demeanor.
  3. Slang
    1. A man; a fellow.
    2. dudes Persons of either sex.
tr.v.   dud·ed, dud·ing, dudes
Slang To dress elaborately or flamboyantly: got all duded up for the show.
interj.   Slang
Used to express approval, satisfaction, or congratulations.

[Origin unknown.]
Our Living Language  : Cowboys and the Wild West are indelibly set in the minds of many as typical of America—an association borne out by several common Modern English words that originated in the speech of the 19th-century western United States. One is dude, now perhaps most familiar as a slang term with a wide range of uses (including use as an all-purpose interjection for expressing approval: "Dude!"). Originally it was applied to fancy-dressed city folk who went out west on vacation. In this usage it first appears in the 1870s. The origin of the word is not known, but a number of other cowboy terms were borrowed by early settlers from American Spanish. These include buckaroo, corral, lasso, mustang, ranch, rodeo, and stampede. Buckaroo, interestingly, is an example of a word borrowed twice: it is an Americanized form of Spanish vaquero, which also made it into English as vaquero, a cowboy.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
Copyright © 2009 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
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Dude

Dude\, n. A kind of dandy; especially, one characterized by an ultrafashionable style of dress and other affectations. [Recent]

The social dude who affects English dress and English drawl. --The American.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
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Language Translation for : dude
Spanish: gaita,
German: der Dudelsack,
Japanese: バグパイプ
More Translations »

dude 
1883, "fastidious man," New York City slang of unknown origin. The vogue word of 1883, originally used in ref. to the devotees of the "aesthetic" craze, later applied to city slickers, especially Easterners vacationing in the West (dude ranch first recorded 1921). Surfer slang application to any male is first recorded c.1970. Female form dudine (1883) has precedence over dudess (1885).
Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2001 Douglas Harper
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